Great talk by Rory Sutherland at Ted on Advertisng

Some really nice insights and as usual delivered with the pre requisite aplomb you expect from Mr Sutherland

Well worth a watch.

Seasame Street spoof's Mad Men

What's to say, brilliant, witty, and more than a little bit true.

Great New Ad Fromat - Open IMU

I met Josh from This is Open recently and he showed us this really innovative and interesting new ad format / concept he had created with his gang at This is Open

The unit essentially allows you to do several cool things.

1. Put almost the content of a microsite in to an ad format
2. Scrape content and bring in xml leads etc
3. Share / Embedd the unit in to your own site
4. Play video and a/v full screen from the ad
4. Data capture etc.

In essence its a really cool widget that can be tailored and served like an add with any content you wish to put it to it.

Here is one they have developed for MyDeco:

And a Vodafone F1 Sponsorship Unit all about McLaren and the F1 season.


Overall really nice and we are thinking of how to use it for clients like Virgin Holidays, Trains and Media even HMRC God forbid your Self assesment could be done in a banner.

London Ad industry spoof

Great piss take of the London Advertising Industry from 42 Below.

Top 101 Most Influential people who NEVER lived

I was going to write a boring post about the new laws on email privacy in the UK and the fact that China will be increasing its censorship of the internet. It certainly has a certain degree of irony that we are spying on our citizens almost as much as the Chinese are restricting theirs!

Anyway I looked up Big brother (the Orwellian not Endemolian) and followed an intriguing link to something much more fun - this book.



It's just for fun but Big Brother is in there, but its just as much fun to see how many marketing/ product and advertising characters are too.

1. The Marlboro Man
2. Big Brother
3. King Arthur
4. Santa Claus (St. Nick)
5. Hamlet
6. Dr. Frankenstein's Monster
7. Siegfried
8. Sherlock Holmes
9. Romeo and Juliet
10. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
11. Uncle Tom
12. Robin Hood
13. Jim Crow
14. Oedipus
15. Lady Chatterly
16. Ebenezer Scrooge
17. Don Quixote
18. Mickey Mouse
19. The American Cowboy
20. Prince Charming
21. Smokey Bear
22. Robinson Crusoe
23. Apollo and Dionysus
24. Odysseus
25. Nora Helmer
26. Cinderella
27. Shylock
28. Rosie the Riveter
29. Midas
30. Hester Prynne
31. The Little Engine That Could
32. Archie Bunker
33. Dracula
34. Alice in Wonderland
35. Citizen Kane
36. Faust
37. Figaro
38. Godzilla
39. Mary Richards
40. Don Juan
41. Bambi
42. William Tell
43. Barbie
44. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
45. Venus and Cupid
46. Prometheus
47. Pandora
48. G. I. Joe
49. Tarzan
50. Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock

51. James Bond

52. Hansel and Gretel

53. Captain Ahab

54. Rick Blaine

55. Ugly Duckling

56. Loch Ness Monster (Nessie)

57. Atticus Finch

58. Valentine (St)

59. Helen (of Troy)

60. Batman

61. Uncle Sam

62. Nancy Drew

63. J. R. Ewing

64. Superman

65. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn

66. HAL 9000 (2001: A Space Odyssey)

67. Kermit the Frog

68. Sam Spade

69. Pied Piper

70. Peter Pan

71. Hiawatha

72. Othello

73. The Little Tramp

74. King Kong

75. Norman Bates

76. Hercules (Heracles)

77. Dick Tracy

78. Joe Camel

79. Cat in the Hat

80. Icarus

81. Mammy

82. Sindbad

83. Amos 'n' Andy

84. Buck Rogers (incl. Flash Gordon)

85. Luke Skywalker

86. Perry Mason

87. Dr. Strangelove

88. Pygmalion

89. Madame Butterfly

90. Hans Beckert

91. Dorothy Gale (Wizard of Oz)

92. Wandering Jew

93. Jay Gatsby

94. Buck (Jack London - Call of the Wild)

95. Willy Loman

96. Betty Boop

97. Ivanhoe

98. Elmer Gantry

99. Lilith

100. John Doe

101. Paul Bunyan

You only need four chords for a hit record

I listened to the radio a lot over Christmas and on Radio one on Sunday whilst driving in the car they featured this Australian Band demonstrating just how many songs which have been hits have used the same 4 chords.


I guess advertising isn't so different - my friend Aaron Martin at Syzygy reminded me of the fact everyone in advertising knows there are only 7 true ideas anyway:

1 the superlative
2 the comparative
3 celebrity endorsement
4 philosophy, the product story
5 the demonstration
6 the pastiche
7 sponsored gag, art piece

He did a pretty good job of making this point at a debate we were both in last year - here is his winning presentation.